by Mike Mcquay
Hauk’s voice came back to him immediately. “Twenty-one hours,” it chided.
“You don’t have to remind me,” he snapped back. Then, “Suppose he’s dead? If I come back without him do you burn these things out?”
There was a pause, a shot of static. When Hauk’s voice came back up, it sounded odd. “If you bring me the briefcase.”
The words hit him like a wrecking ball on a brick building. “The man means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”
“Get them both back, Plissken.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’m on my way.”
The truck’s radio was tuned to their communication. When Plissken got through, it started up immediately and began dragging the Gulffire down the runway.
He watched the speed build up on the dial, and his own spirit began to gear up with the acceleration. He took hold of the stick, felt the vibrations as the glider strained against the gravity that wanted to keep it chained to the ground. When he and the glider were ready, Plissken eased back on the stick and watched the outlines on the screens drop off the bottom and disappear as if they never existed at all.
He was up; he was free.
The urge was there to kick in the jet packs and put as much distance between himself and Hauk as he possibly could. It was almost as if getting away from the source of the madness would somehow kill the madness. It wouldn’t, though. He eased around forty degrees and headed for Manhattan Island.
Almost at once, the outline of the city appeared on the screens-distant, but not that distant. He found a thermal and bought himself some height. He was just seeing the tops of the buildings, and was closing in on them. A red blip appeared on the top of one of the outlines, flashing quickly, urgently.
Hauk’s voice on the radio, breaking the beautiful silence. “Are you picking up the target blip?”
“Right on course.”
He slid silently up on the cold empty towers, closed in on the City of Death. He lit a cigarette and dragged on it without pleasure. The buildings were right on him. He dipped down to their height and began aiming himself between them, testing his reflexes.
“How’s your altitude?” Hauk’s squeaky voice asked.
Plissken made a handsign at the radio.
“If you need to get higher,” Hauk said, “use your jet engine.”
Plissken sighed. The man wasn’t going to leave him alone. “Too much noise,” he replied.
His good eye drifted to the screen, went wide. It was filled with the outline of a huge building. It was there, right there.
“Damn!” He jerked the stick hard, tilting, nearly rolling. The building filled the screens, then listed crazily, finally sliding off the screen.
He moaned and sat back, removing the cigarette that he had bitten nearly in two. “Been a while,” he mumbled.
“What-what’s that?” came Hauk’s voice.
“Nothing,” Plissken returned.
He checked his instrument heading, made a small correction and once again, the target blip was on the screen. He evened the altitude and aimed for it.
The updraft from the buildings was creating turbulence. The stick began vibrating in his grasp, wanting to jerk to one side or the other. He got a tight grip on it with his right hand, then with both hands. The plane began rattling, the instrument panels jiggling out of focus. He could feel it in his legs right through the floor, then his whole body.
Then the whole plane was buffeting, shaking madly like it wanted to come apart. His insides were jangling and the pain shot through his head like orange fire.
The blip was coming closer, growing large on the vibrating screens.
Hauk’s voice. “Plissken…”
The glider was creaking loudly, banging, threatening to come apart all around him. And still the blip grew.
“Plissken…”
He was one with the vibrations. He was the beating heart of the living glider. The blip was filling the screens, overfilling, spilling blue lined light onto his body.
“Plissken, what are you doing?”
He could barely talk through his chattering teeth. “Playing with myself, you bastard. I’m going in!”
A buzzer sounded his proximity to the target. He pushed the stick violently forward, nosing down fast. He hit, bouncing, bashing the immutability of the building. The wide roof spread out before him on the screens.
He was moving fast, much too fast. He jammed his feet to the floor, locking the wheels, hearing the whining screech as they tried to grab hold of the pavement. He punched the flap button and they sprang up, more resistance.
He lost control with the flaps. He was spinning. Whirling through the vortex. The stick was useless. He let it go and punched up the anchor.
It wasn’t much, but it was the only shot he had left. The glider shuddered as a section came out of the tail. He braced himself, clamping his teeth tightly closed.
The anchor grabbed the cement and held. Then the violent jerk as its line pulled taut on the careening machine. The plane screamed all around Plissken and he was thrown forward, despite his preparations. His mind keyed to a crash. It never came.
There was deadly quiet all around him. He didn’t move. He just listened to the pounding of his own heart.
“Plissken…”
Something was wrong, though. He was resting at an angle, nose pointed up. Every time he moved, the glider wobbled. He decided to move very carefully.
“Plissken…”
Reaching out gingerly, he flipped off the switches one by one. The screens went black. Then slowly, oh so slowly, he unbuckled.
“Plissken?”
He unlatched the canopy and slid it slowly back. He was looking up into the rain/gas clouds. He stood and looked out The whole tail section and one wing were overhanging the edge of the building. The only thing keeping the glider where it was, was the nylon rope attached to the anchor.
“Plissken, come in.”
Climbing out was done by inches. The Gulffire shuddered with every movement. He got a foot out on the wing, nearly slipping on its wet surface. Then his other leg. He reached back and closed the canopy, shutting out Hauk-for once, having the last word.
He slowly slid down on his hands and knees and edged himself along the slippery wing. The glider moved as he did, tilting up slightly with his weight. When he was safely above the roof, he rolled off the wing to the cement, the Gulffire creaking back to overhang the edge again.
The wind was high up there; it was enough to cause the whole building to sway. He got up and, leaning into the howling beast, made his way toward the outside door.
Spread out all around him was the City of Death: dark towers, many ruins, pockets of light trailing wispy gray white smoke into the crying sky. And sounds. Not the sounds that he usually associated with cities. These were animal sounds, banshee screams and low-down growls and jungle drums beating maddening rhythms. Plissken’s hand automatically went to his holster, reassuring.
He passed the carcass of an old heliport control shack, viewport window gone, inside charred and gutted. The door housing was set about fifty feet past the heliport. He moved to it quickly.
The door was battered, hanging on one hinge. Stepping back a pace, he kicked at it. The force tore it off the remaining hinge, and it fell back inside, sliding noisily down the stairwell to rest against the bottom door.
Plissken followed it down… into Bedlam.
XI
WORLD TRADE CENTER
19:22:45, 44, 43…
The hallway was long and dark. He raked its length with the flashlight before proceeding. There was no sound, except the moan of the wind blowing through the dark tower’s glassless windows.
He felt relatively safe up there. At well over a hundred stories, very few people, even crazy people, would be willing to spend the hours it would take to walk that many stairs. It was a nice view, but not that nice.
It was probably time to get in touch with Hauk so that the man wouldn’t get his bowels in an uproar. A
doorway was to his right; he looked in, playing the light around the shadowed corners before entering.
It was an old office that looked like the scene of a riot. The windows were gone, large frags of glass scattered over everything. What furniture there was, had been overturned and ripped to shreds in ways that rational human beings would never think of. The wind whistled in three octaves through the windows.
A large desk was overturned in the center of the room. He got it back upright and sat on its edge, swinging his legs. Lying the flashlight down to spotlight the wall, he got into the holster. Bringing out the small pocket radio, he telescoped the antenna.
Frowning once, he flipped the switch. “I’m inside the World Trade Center,” he said. “Just like Leningrad, Hauk.”
Hauk’s voice came back through the thing, loud and screeching. It blared, forcing Plissken to hold it at arm’s length.
“IS THE GLIDER INTACT?”
He pulled it back to himself, trying to adjust the volume knob. But it seemed to wheel freely, not attached to anything. “It’s okay, I guess,” he said into the thing, still turning the knob. “But taking off is for shit. I’ll work it out.”
The voice blared back, probably filling the whole floor. “YOU HAVE TO USE THE STAIRWELL. IT’LL TAKE YOU AWHILE TO GET DOWN TO STREET LEVEL. CALL ME WHEN YOU’RE OUTSIDE…”
Plissken shut off the radio just to get away from the sound. Nothing like a quiet entrance. He could almost think that Hauk gave him that radio purposely. He shook it off and climbed off the desk. He’d deal with Hauk later. After.
He put back the radio and routed through the pouch for a minute. He came up with a foil-wrapped package the size of a golf ball. Unwrapping it, he removed the contents-a block of crystal meth, looking like a chunk of rock candy.
Knocking it on the desk, he broke it into several chunks, the largest of which he picked up and tossed into his mouth, swallowing it dry. The poison bitter taste slicked a gully along his tongue and trailed in stringers down his throat.
He wasn’t tired yet, but he’d be needing his share of go-fast just to get down those stairs. Putting the rest of the meth back into the pouch, he moved cautiously into the hall.
He played the light down the hallway until he saw the exit sign at its end. The stairwell. As he moved toward it, he thought he saw the flash of a moving shadow ahead, but when he got to the spot, there was nothing.
The stairway door was gone. He started down.
It was a hell of a long way.
About six floors down, the speed took hold and began jerking his body to a new metabolic rhythm. He picked up the pace. Every floor down had its own landing, then the stairs would turn back upon themselves and go on for another landing. Each landing was a new world.
There were bodies on the landings in various stages of decomposition. Some without heads, some just heads. There were the remnants of campfires long past, piles of animal bones, probably dogs and cats, scattered through the ashes. The smell was always bad and often overpowering. Plissken found a roll of gauze in his survival kit and wrapped it around his nose and mouth in several layers to keep out the smell. It didn’t work very well.
It took longer to get down than he could have possibly imagined. Even with the meth, it seemed like he was destined to descend stairs for the rest of his life. The steps finally terminated in a small hallway.
He unwrapped the gauze and threw it aside. Then he moved forward, slowly, with care. He was on street level then, in the thick of it. The hallway ended with the building’s lobby. Plissken stood in the entryway, letting his eyes roam the shambles that spread out darkly before him.
Afraid to use the flash, he made out the lumpous forms of broken and overturned furniture through bits of dim lighting that filtered in from outside.
There was a flickering orange glow climbing on the wall farthest from him that formed strange, jumping shadows. Unable to make out the source of the light because of a dilapidated information desk, he began creeping toward it.
The smell reached him first. Food cooking-meat. It was mixed in with the smell of charred wood. He moved agilely, catlike, around the helter skelter destruction of the room. His eye hurt, always hurt, but the speed had somehow anesthetized the ache in his side. He reached the information desk and peeked over its top.
Three men were seated crosslegged around the small fire. They were roasting a straggly cat on an umbrella shaft. They were talking too low for Plissken to hear.
They were stripped to the waist, and something the color of rust was smeared over their chests and faces. They had waist-length hair that was held in place by headbands. One of them had green and yellow parrot feathers stuck in the band to make a crude headdress. Indians.
Their weapons lay close at hand, long knives that glinted in the firelight, hand-fashioned bows and quivers of arrows made from the shafts of fishing rods with ten-penny nails stuck in the ends. A long pole lay beside them, leaning against the shadow-jumping wall. At first Plissken thought that the things hanging from it were the pelts of small animals. Then he realized what they really were-human scalps.
He was backing away from the desk when he heard the snap of wood. He flared around and one of the shadows had pulled away from the room of shadows and was hurtling through the air toward him.
There was no reaction time-an Indian, screaming, was on top of him. His screams charged the atmosphere, icy and inhuman, and his eyes were wild and glazed.
Plissken went back with the man, but didn’t fall. The Indian held his hands up taut, holding piano wire stretched between them. The throat was what he wanted. In flashes, Plissken watched the humming wire vibrate toward him. He got his hand up at the last second to protect himself.
The wire twanged on his hand-F# above middle C. It tightened the hand against his own neck, strangulating, cutting deeply into the side of his palm. The arms tightening the noose were impossibly strong, the strength of madness.
They pulled him backward. He went with it, forcing the flow, not fighting. When he connected with the man’s body, he jammed back with his free elbow, plunging hard into soft belly flesh.
The Indian’s scream turned to a gurgled choke and the man doubled over, releasing his hold on the wire. Plissken was around on him instinctively, his arm way above his head. He came down hard, like thunder on the exposed Indian neck. And even the choking stopped as the madman went to the demolished floor like someone had cut his string.
Plissken was off and running down the first corridor he saw. The shouts of the other Indians filled the hollow hall to cacophony all around him. They were too close.
Without turning or looking, his hand went to the survival pack, closing on the wide mouth barrel of a flare pistol. Still running, he got it out and cocked the less than precision hammer; he wheeled, skidded to a stop and fired.
His assailants were less than twenty feet behind him. The phosphorous ball whooshed from the barrel, exploding the hallway in brilliant light. It hit the floor, popping loudly, streamers of white-hot burning light squirting everywhere like a fountain, or like the Fourth of July. The Indians, in bold relief, lit to washed-out white, dove for cover. And Snake Plissken was off and running again.
The corridor ended in a metal door that looked like it had never been opened. He charged toward it, cocking the pistol again. Then, on a dead run, he fired. The door went up, blasting right out of its frame. On its other side, black night.
Plissken was through the door, in an alley. He just picked a direction and ran-free-at least for the moment.
Reaching the end of the alley, he skittered into the tangle of concrete jungle that was the city. He ran another block, two blocks, until he was sure that he wasn’t being followed.
Then he climbed the cracked, broken steps of a dead brownstone and squatted down in the shadows of its entryway. The building was intact for a floor above him. The rest of it was a pile of bricks and pretzel-twisted steel girders. Much of the block was bombed-out in the same way. It looked like the
place where all the old buildings came to die.
He took his breath in measured doses, his eye roaming the deserted streets for enemies. It was a jungle, and he was both predator and prey in the chain of survival. There were no rational systems to apply here, no codes, no ethics. There was only life and death.
He wiped a hand across his sweat-streaming face and reached into the bulky holster. His rifle was in two parts. He took them out and snapped them together without looking; his eye was busy with the crumbling streets. The pieces locked together with a solid click, and he let his hands linger on the gun’s contours for just a second before reaching into the pouch for a clip of ammunition.
The ammo slid in slowly, sensuously, and locked into place. Snake Plissken stood up full and primed the bolt. He tucked the weapon under his arm and strode resolutely down the steps. If he had to survive here as an animal, let it be as a lion.
He moved into the street and turned around full. In the distance a wide avenue was filled completely with smoke. The plane. He moved toward it, eye wary, always watching.
Junked cars filled the street. He moved past each one carefully, checking for surprises. When he reached the smoke, he put on the ruby goggles and his field of vision became ghostlike; negative images drifted dreamlike before him. He felt removed from his body, like a spirit observing an unreal landscape.
Reaching into the pouch, he removed the tiny homer that was keyed to the President’s bracelet. Nothing. He wasn’t close enough to the source yet.
He kept moving through the smoke until he caught sight of the diffusing light from a dying fire. He moved toward the place. First he came to chunks of burned, twisted metal and scattered wreckage. Then a wheel. Then a seat-it was sitting upright, pretty as you please, right in the middle of the street. Something was strapped to it: it was a glob, an oozing broken glob. He had to assume that it had once been a human being, since he couldn’t imagine what else could have been strapped to a seat like that.
He moved on.
Most of the plane was in one spot. It had smashed into the building and then slid down its side, taking huge chunks of steel and concrete down with it. It had exploded at least once, and what had been a tail section was nothing more than a blackened hole. Part of the cabin remained intact, and the white fire came from in there.